The Political Housewyf’s Chinese Beef

In the middle of the chaos of reorganizing the library (formerly known as the formal dining room (which I have no need of, since the view from the table in the kitchen is much, much nicer, and what I really needed a room for was our gigantic book and fragile international souvenir collections)), trying to figure out which books (if any) could be donated, where to put my quickly expanding collection of homeschooling books, etc., my dear, long-suffering husband left the kids to play Wii bowling long enough to stick his head around the corner and ask in a hopeful tone of voice, “So, are we going to eat dinner sometime soon?”

Oh, yeah, dinner.  Left to my own devices, sans kids and husband, I would’ve happily stayed up until 3 am cleaning and reorganizing the library (which, of course, would’ve spilled over into reorganizing other rooms), maybe stopping long enough for a quick dinner of whatever fell out of the freezer.

Since I do have kids and a hungry husband, I had to come up with something semi-normal for dinner.  I had some stir fry beef (half off on Thursdays, because the grocery wants to clean out the expiring stuff and restock for the weekend shoppers), some scallions, some celery that was going limp, and some fresh noodles (as in not dried; I get them at one of the local Chinese groceries in the refrigerated section).

As my husband wandered through ten minutes later, he sniffed.  “Mmmm… that smells good.  Have we had this before?”  Um, no.  “Umm… does it have a name?”  Not exactly, but it’s obviously traditional Chinese, because I will bet you that every housewife in China has as some point pulled out what she had in the kitchen and made some kind of stir fry out of it.  It was actually very good, so here it is:

Approx. 1 to 2 pounds of cheap beef (like stir fry chunks), sliced thin

1/2 cup (or so) Soy sauce

2 tsp. sesame oil

1 Tbsp. Hoisin sauce

1 Tbsp. rice wine vinegar

2 Tbsp Thai green curry paste

Peanut oil (for wok)

1 tsp. cornstarch

2 to 3 scallions, sliced, white and some of the green parts

3 to 4 ribs of celery, sliced

 

1.  Put on a pot of water to boil for the noodles.  Or, alternately, steam rice.

2.  Marinate thinly sliced beef in soy sauce for about fifteen minutes.  Pour just enough peanut oil to thinly cover the bottom of the wok and heat.  Add beef and remaining soy sauce, stiring until beef is almost cooked through.  (The idea of wok cooking is fairly high heat and quick cooking times.)

3.  Add Hoisin sauce, rice wine vinegar, and green curry paste.  Stir to coat the beef.  Add vegetables (substitute pea pods, baby corn, water chestnuts, etc. as necessary or desired).  Cook briefly (i.e. not enough to make the veggies limp).  Check taste and adjust seasonings as desired.

4.  Stir cornstarch into a little water to make a smooth slurry and add to the wok (adding cornstarch directly to the bubbling liquid will cause lots of little lumps; the slurry is worth the extra few seconds).  Stir for about another minute, which should be enough for the heat to work on the cornstarch and thicken up the sauce.  Turn wok to low or set on cool burner.

5.  Add noodles to the boiling water.  If they are the fairly thick noodles (sort of linguini size), they usually take three to five minutes to cook, but check the package (if there’s any English instructions on it; I’ve gotten several brands that don’t have any).  The finer noodles cook faster.  A splash of oil in the water helps to keep them from sticking to each other.

6.  When the noodles are done, either pull them out with chopsticks or drain them (do not rinse).  Serve beef on top.  Some chopped fresh cilantro on top might be nice, too.

 

The green curry paste can be sort of hot, but it was well balanced in this, and my kids didn’t complain about the heat at all.  And, yes, if you don’t cook Chinese often, you may not have these things lying around your kitchen.  But this actually came out well enough, I may intentionally cook it again.

Enjoy!

(And my husband asked, “A recipe?  What happened to politics?”  I’ve done politics intensively lately.  I’m taking a break.  This is housewyf stuff.  I’ll get back to politics shortly; right now, I’m just trying to get back into the habit of blogging after too long off over the holidays!)